Topic: Allowing copy partition functionality based on used data
GParted would really be much more usable if it allowed the user to copy a partition to another place based on the used data size and not the total size of the source partition. If I have a parttion of xxx bytes size, of which only yyy bytes are being used, I should not need a destination of at least xxx bytes to copy the partition if at least yyy bytes were available in the destination area.
This situation comes up when a very large partition has much less actual data on it than its actual size. This is most often done so that the user does not have to worry about increasing the size of the partition at some future date, but wants to make the partition large enough for long term use. Backing up such a partition by copying to another disk, most often on some external drive, should not require the same sized partition area on the external drive if the actual used data in the source partition is much less than the actual source partition size.
Even if copying just the used data of a source partition to a destination partition area that is at least as large as the used data size were to be much slower than just copying an entire partition, the functionality would be valuable in the case when there is not enough room on the destination drive to copy the entire source partition, or when the user wants to save space on the destination disk. Some partition programs do allow this functionality but GParted does not. It would be great if GParted were improved to allow this functionality also.